Mobile haul vehicles, such as railcars, are used to haul ore between different locations. For example, the railcars can be loaded with ore at a mine site, and transport the ore to a final use location or to a port at which the ore is offloaded to a ship. The ore can be loaded onto the railcars via excavation machines (e.g., wheel loaders, rope shovels, hydraulic shovels, etc.) or an automated hopper/feeder, and unloaded by way of a rotary dumper that holds each car while flipping it upside-down.
Care should be taken when loading and unloading haul vehicles. Specifically, it can be important to load each vehicle with a productive amount of ore that does not overburden the vehicle. Similarly, the load should be distributed evenly to promote smooth operation of the haul vehicle without causing damage. It can also be important to completely empty the vehicle during unloading so as to be efficient in the hauling process. If some ore is left in the vehicle after loading, in addition to reducing an efficiency of the vehicle, the remaining ore could imbalance the vehicle. An imbalanced vehicle has the potential to cause premature wear.
Historically, loading and unloading of a haul vehicle has been manually observed or monitored. In particular, as the vehicle is being loaded, an operator of the excavation machine and/or the hopper/feeder would look into the haul vehicle and make a judgment call as to when the vehicle is properly loaded and balanced. Likewise, after the vehicle has been flipped over during unloading, the operator of the rotary dumper would look into the vehicle and determine if an amount of ore remaining in the vehicle is significant enough and/or critically positioned enough to warrant additional effort be spent removing the ore. While adequate for some applications, these processes may be labor intensive and prone to error.
The payload monitoring system of the present disclosure is directed towards overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above and/or other problems of the prior art.